President Barack Obama's Complete List of Historic Firsts [Updated]

Yes, he's historic, alright.

Law and Justice

• First President to Violate the War Powers Act (Unilaterally Executing American Military Operations in Libya Without Informing Congress In the Required Time Period - Source: Huffington Post)

• First President to Triple the Number of Warrantless Wiretaps of U.S. Citizens (Source: ACLU)

• First President to Sign into Law a Bill That Permits the Government to "Hold Anyone Suspected of Being Associated With Terrorism Indefinitely, Without Any Form of Due Process. No Indictment. No Judge or Jury. No Evidence. No Trial. Just an Indefinite Jail Sentence" (NDAA Bill - Source: Business Insider)

• First President to Refuse to Tell the Public What He Did For Eight (8) Hours After Being Informed That a U.S. Ambassador Was Facing Imminent Death During a Terror Attack (Source: Mediate)

• First President to Lie About the Reason For an Ambassador's Death, Blaming it on an Internet Video Rather Than What He Knew to be the Case: the Al Qaeda-linked Terror Group Ansar al-Sharia (Source: House Oversight Committee, et. al.)

• First President to Have an Innocent Filmmaker Thrown in Jail After Lying About the Cause for a Deadly Attack on U.S. Diplomats, Using the Filmmaker as a Scapegoat (Source: CNN)

• First President to Use the IRS to "Unfairly Target Political Enemies" as Well as Jewish Groups (Source: Sen. Ted Cruz)

• First President to Unlawfully Seize Telephone Records of More than 100 Reporters to Intimidate and/or Bully Them (Source: Associated Press)

• First President to Witness a Single Cabinet Secretary Commit Multiple Hatch Act Violations Without Acting, Speaking Out, Disciplining or Firing That Person (Source: New York Times)

• First President to Have His Attorney General Held in Criminal Contempt of Congress For His Efforts to Cover Up Operation Fast and Furious, That Killed Over 300 Individuals (Source: Politico)

• First President to claim Executive Privilege to shield a sitting Attorney General from a Contempt of Congress finding for perjury and withholding evidence from lawful subpoenas (Source: Business Insider)

• First President to Issue Unlawful "Recess-Appointments" Over a Long Weekend -- While the U.S. Senate Remained in Session (against the advice of his own Justice Department - Source: United States Court of Appeals)

• First President to Fire an Inspector General of Americorps for Catching One of His Friends in a Corruption Case (Source: Gawker)

• First President to "Order a Secret Amnesty Program that Stopped the Deportations of Illegal Immigrants Across the U.S., Including Those With Criminal Convictions" (Source: DHS documents uncovered by Judicial Watch)

• First President to Sue States for Enforcing Voter ID Requirements, Which Were Previously Ruled Legal by the U.S. Supreme Court (Source: CNN)

• First President to Encourage Racial Discrimination and Intimidation at Polling Places (the New Black Panthers voter intimidation case, Source: Investors Business Daily)

• First President to Refuse to Comply With a House Oversight Committee Subpoena (Source: Heritage Foundation)

• First President to Arbitrarily Declare an Existing Law Unconstitutional and Refuse to Enforce It (Defense of Marriage Act - Source: ABC News)

• First President to Demand a Company Hand Over $20 Billion to One of His Political Appointees (BP Oil Spill Relief Fund - Source: Fox News)

• First President to Have a Law Signed By an 'Auto-pen' Without Being "Present" (Source: The New York Times)

• First President to Have His Administration Fund an Organization Tied to the Cop-Killing Terrorist Group, the Weather Underground (Source: National Review)

Scandals

• First President to publicly announce an enemies list (consisting of his opponents campaign contributors; and to use the instrumentalities of government to punish those on the list - Source: Heritage Foundation)

• First President to Attempt to Block Legally-Required 60-Day Layoff Notices by Government Contractors Due to His Own Cuts to Defense Spending -- Because The Notices Would Occur Before the Election. (Source: National Journal)

• First President to Intentionally Disable Credit Card Security Measures (in order to allow over-the-limit donations, foreign contributions and other illegal fundraising measures - Source: Power Line)

• First President to send 80 percent of a $16 billion program (green energy) to his campaign bundlers and contributors, leaving only 20% to those who did not contribute. (Source: Washington Examiner)

• First President to Propose an Executive Order Demanding Companies Disclose Their Political Contributions to Bid on Government Contracts (Source: Wall Street Journal)

• First President to issue an Executive Order implementing a "Racial Justice System", a system that tries to achieve "racially equivalent outcomes" for crimes (Source: Daily Caller)

• First President to Leak Confidential IRS Tax Records to Groups Aligned Politically With Him for Partisan Advantage (Source: The Hill Newspaper)

• First President to Use the EPA to Punish Political Enemies and Reward Political Allies (Source: Competitive Enterprise Institute)

• First President to Send Millions in Taxpayer Dollars to His Wife's Former Employer (Source: White House Dossier)

Economy

• First President to Preside Over a Cut to the Credit Rating of the United States Government (Source: Reuters)

• First President to Bypass Congress and Implement the DREAM Act Through Executive Fiat (Source: Christian Science Monitor)

• First President to Move America Past the Dependency Tipping Point, In Which 51% of Households Now Pay No Income Taxes (Source: Center for Individual Freedom)

• First President to Increase Food Stamp Spending By More Than 100% in Less Than Four Years (Source: Sen. Jeff Sessions)

• First President to Spend a Trillion Dollars on 'Shovel-Ready' Jobs -- and Later Admit There Was No Such Thing as Shovel-Ready Jobs (Source: President Obama during an early meeting of his 'Jobs Council')

• First President to Threaten Insurance Companies After They Publicly Spoke out on How Obamacare Helped Cause their Rate Increases (Source: The Hill)

• First President to Abrogate Bankruptcy Law to Turn Over Control of Companies to His Union Supporters (Source: Wall Street Journal)

• First President to Propose Budgets So Unreasonable That Not a Single Representative From Either Party Would Cast a Vote in Favor (Sources: The Hill, Open Market)

• First President Whose Economic Policies Have the Number of Americans on Disability Exceed the Population of New York (Source: CNS News)

• First President to Sign a Law Requiring All Americans to Purchase a Product From a Third Party (Source: Wall Street Journal)

• First President to Sue States For Enforcing Immigration Laws Passed by Congress (Source: The Arizona Republic newspaper)

• First President to See America Lose Its Status as the World's Largest Economy (Source: Peterson Institute)

• First President to redistribute $26.5 billion of the taxpayers' funds to his union supporters in the UAW (Source: Heritage Foundation)

• First President to Threaten an Auto Company (Ford) After It Publicly Mocked Bailouts of GM and Chrysler (Source: Detroit News)

• First President to Attempt to Bully a Major Manufacturing Company Into Not Opening a Factory in a Right-to-Work State (Boeing's facility in South Carolina - Source: Wall Street Journal)

Energy Policy

• First President to Endanger the Stability of the Electric Grid by Shutting Down Hundreds of Coal-Fired Plants Without Adequate Replacement Technologies (Source: National Electric Reliability Corporation - PDF)

• First President to Have His EPA Repudiated by a Federal Judge for "Overstepping Its Powers" When They Attempted to Shut Down Coal Operations in Appalachia (Source: Huffington Post)

• First President to be Held in Contempt of Court for Illegally Obstructing Oil Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico (Source: Politico)

National Security and World Affairs

• First President to Lie Repeatedly to the American People About the Murder of a U.S. Ambassador and Three Other Diplomatic Personnel for Purely Political Reasons, Rewriting a "Talking Points" Memo No Fewer Than a Dozen Times to Avoid Referencing a Pre-Planned Terror Attack (Source: ABC News)

• First President to Openly Defy a Congressional Order Not To Share Sensitive Nuclear Defense Secrets With the Russian Government (Sources: ABC News, Rep. Michael Turner)

• First President to Leak Highly Classified Military and Intelligence Secrets to Hollywood In Order to Promote a Movie That Could Help His Reelection Campaign (Source: Judicial Watch)

• First President to Terminate America's Ability to Put a Man into Space (Sources: USA Today, ABC News)

• First President to press for a "treaty giving a U.N. body veto power over the use of our territorial waters and rights to half of all offshore oil revenue" (The Law Of The Sea Treaty, Source: Investors Business Daily)

• First President to send $200 million to a terrorist organization (Hamas) after Congress had explicitly frozen the money for fear it would fund attacks against civilians (Sources: American Thinker, The Independent [UK])

Miscellania

• First President to Insert Himself into White House Biographies of Past Presidents (Source: The New York Times).

• First President to Golf 122 or More Times in His First Four-and-a-half Years in Office (Source: White House Dossier)

But remember: he will not rest until all Americans have jobs, affordable homes, green-energy vehicles, and the environment is repaired, etc., etc., etc.

GRAPHIC: 5 Ways the Immigration Bill Is Like Obamacare

From the peerless Heritage Foundation:


Here's an idea regarding outrageous bills such as Obamacare and "Comprehensive Immigration Reform". Bills so complex and so lengthy that no one, not a single legislator, is able to read or comprehend them before being forced to vote.

This idea builds upon Thomas Jefferson's suggestion to James Madison: that bills passed by Congress should lay in stasis for at least a year in order to facilitate public review and open debate. I propose:

Any bill passed by Congress shall, prior to being signed into law by the President, be published into the Congressional Record. It shall be be open to public discourse and debate for a period no less than a number of days equal to or greater than the number of pages required for publication in the Congressional Record before it may be signed into law.

A bill that requires 2,000 pages should require at least 2,000 days of public review and debate.

BUT MELVIN, HE'S SO HISTORIC: True Unemployment Rate Hits 23 Percent, Highest Since Great Depression

John Williams' ShadowStats charts the real unemployment rate by employing the methods the U.S. government used to use, before they became a political liability.

The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.


The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.

In conjunction with that news, please consider a report from the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee (TBAC), which warns that when the Fed stops quantitative easing the interest on the federal debt will more than quadruple from $205 billion a year to $855 billion. Can you say, "Financial Meltdown", boys and girls?

Gee, I wonder what Paul "Subprime" Krugman and Henry "P.O.S." Blodget think of this?

That TBAC members are Violent, Tea-Bagging Racists™, no doubt?


Hat tip: BadBlue Money.

The 10 Least Known Facts About Obamacare

A recent article in Yahoo! Finance ("Business Owners Confused as Ever by Obamacare") inspired our enterprising cub reporter Biff Spackle to assemble the following little-known Obamacare facts.

10. In New York City, you lose your right to health care by consuming a Chili Dog
9. All insurance plans come with a free weekly newsletter from Dr. Kevorkian
8. In low tier plan, anasthesia administered orally via shots of Jim Beam
7. Employers with 50 or more workers required to offer health insurance or face waterboarding
6. Overflow E.R. patients in Florida automatically airlifted to Cuba for treatment
5. All of your personal health records available to you via Dropbox.com
4. Sex changes are free of charge, but reversing sex changes requires a $20 co-pay
3. Over-the-counter drugs must be purchased from a company owned by Nancy Pelosi's husband
2. Couples earning more than $250,000 are prohibited from having more than one child
1. Any elective surgery requires a suppository

All of these are 100 percent verified accurate, as far as you know.


Hat tip: BadBlue Money News.

The Sequester Fraud in One Picture

Suffering through hours of delays in air travel? Blaming the sequester? Thanks to Phil Kerpen, we get a true sense of how "devastating" the cuts to the FAA are.


Not only is the FAA receiving more money this year than ever before (even with the sequester), if memory serves roughly half of its personnel are non-essential. The President, however, chose to furlough only essential personnel to punish the American people.

Have we ever had a President who intentionally tries to inflict pain on the American people?

And have we ever had a media that refuses to report upon this and dozens of other arguably impeachable offenses (e.g., refusing to enforce immigration law, refusing to answer for the murder of an Ambassador, sending thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels, etc.)?

Those are both rhetorical questions.


Hat tip: Jim Simpson.

Slow Down Immigration Reform: An Open Letter to Sen. Harry Reid from Sen. Rand Paul

Guest post by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)

Dear Majority Leader Reid,

As our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to those affected by the tragedy in Boston, I urge you to incorporate the following national security concerns into the comprehensive immigration reform debate. Before Congress moves forward, some important national security questions must be addressed.

I believe that any real comprehensive immigration reform must implement strong national security protections. The facts emerging in the Boston Marathon bombing have exposed a weakness in our current system. If we don't use this debate as an opportunity to fix flaws in our current system, flaws made even more evident last week, then we will not be doing our jobs.

We should not proceed until we understand the specific failures of our immigration system. Why did the current system allow two individuals to immigrate to the United States from the Chechen Republic in Russia, an area known as a hotbed of Islamic extremism, who then committed acts of terrorism? Were there any safeguards? Could this have been prevented? Does the immigration reform before us address this?

There should be hearings in the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee that study the national security aspects of this situation, making sure that our current immigration system gives individuals from high-risk areas of the world heightened scrutiny.

In the wake of 9/11, there was a comprehensive reform of our intelligence gathering system, yet our improved intelligence gathering system did not adequately detect these extremists. We need to understand possible intelligence failures and craft solutions.

Media reports indicate that the deceased bombing suspect was interviewed by the FBI two years ago at the request of a foreign government. We need to know the details of this interview. We need to know if this interview might have given investigators any reason to conclude that this individual might be dangerous or at least worthy of further inquiry. If so, was there an intelligence failure? At the very least, it should be examined.

Media reports indicate that both the bombing suspects were legal permanent residents and one is reported to be a naturalized citizen. We need to make sure that we have safeguards against this type of situation happening again.

In 2002, Congress set up the National Security Registration System (NSEERS), yet it was suspended in 2011 by Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. That system had problems, yet was still based on the practical idea that extra screening is necessary from nations that have a higher population of extremists. Congress might need a similar system updated for current circumstances to be rolled into comprehensive immigration reform.

I would like the US-VISIT/OBIM program studied to see if it actually works, or at least study the process by which we collect and analyze biometric data on immigrants.

Our refugee programs have proven to be a problem. On, January 29, 2013, two Iraqi citizens living in Bowling Green, in my home state of Kentucky, were sentenced to long prison terms for participating in terrorism and providing material support to terrorists while living in the United States. How did this happen? Does the current immigration reform address how this might have happened? We may need more scrutiny when accepting refugees from high-risk nations.

I want to make sure that any new bill addresses the visa entry and exit programs, in addition to refugee programs that have proven problematic in Bowling Green and possibly, if media reports are correct, in Boston.

Finally, do we need to take a hard look at student visas? Should we suspend student visas, or at least those from high-risk areas, pending an investigation into the national security implications of this program?

I respectfully request that the Senate consider the following two conditions as part of the comprehensive immigration reform debate: One, the Senate needs a thorough examination of the facts in Massachusetts to see if legislation is necessary to prevent a similar situation in the future. Two, national security protections must be rolled into comprehensive immigration reform to make sure the federal government does everything it can to prevent immigrants with malicious intent from using our immigration system to gain entry into the United States in order to commit future acts of terror.

Thank you for your consideration of this request.

Sincerely,

Rand Paul, M.D.


Hat tip: TPNN.

The 6 Economic Charts That Vintage Media is Hiding From You

Business Insider offers 66 charts that are said to worry Wall Street insiders, but these are the six I found most troubling.












These charts align perfectly wtih David Stockman's must-read article, highlighted at Peak Prosperity. The piper will be paid.


Hat tip: Lee Cary.

The Horrifying Chart I Recommend You Forward to Every Democrat Voter You Know

Along with a polite thank you note. You see, a picture -- along with the appropriate captions -- really is worth 1,000 words:

A. President Obama is inaugurated.

B. President Obama signs Obamacare into law. Thousands of pages of law and tens of thousands of pages of regulations (which have yet to be completed) have thrown large regulatory roadblocks at small businesses and either prevented hiring, forced layoffs or compelled the move of workers from full-time to part-time.

C. President Obama signs the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill into law, which prosecutes not a single banker and also fails to address the cause of the mortage meltdown, Fannie Mae. Just this month, the federal government itself admitted that "no one has any idea what compliance with financial regulations, including the Dodd-Frank financial reforms, actually costs."

D. President Obama signs an Executive Order creating a de facto "DREAM Act" amnesty for illegal aliens in the United States, bypassing a Congress that was unwilling to pass legislation to do so.

And a postscript: Obamacare really doesn't even fully kick in until January 1st 2014. Combined with "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" and untold new EPA regulations headed at energy companies, this administration appears bound and determined to crush entrepreneurship in the U.S.

Gird your loins.

Public Service for Small Businesses: Free Obamacare Pink Slip Notice

As a public service for businesses impacted by Obamacare's Byzantine maze of penalties, fees, taxes, mandates and other regulations that will require you to shed workers, our enterprising Cub Reporter Biff Spackle offers the following Semi-Official Obamacare Pink Slip.


Feel free to reproduce anywhere, anytime as a reminder to the drones that they may want to think before they vote next time around. That is, if there is a next time.

The Stimulus Disease [White]

By Andrew Dickson White

EARLY in the year 1789 the French nation found itself in deep financial embarrassment: there was a heavy debt and a serious deficit...

...It was urged, then, that the issue of four hundred millions of paper, (not in the shape of interest-bearing bonds, as had at first been proposed, but in notes small as well as large), would give the treasury something to pay out immediately, and relieve the national necessities; that, having been put into circulation, this paper money would stimulate business; that it would give to all capitalists, large or small, the means for buying from the nation the ecclesiastical real estate, and that from the proceeds of this real estate the nation would pay its debts and also obtain new funds for new necessities: never was theory more seductive both to financiers and statesmen.

It would be a great mistake to suppose that the statesmen of France, or the French people, were ignorant of the dangers in issuing irredeemable paper money; No matter how skillfully the bright side of such a currency was exhibited, all thoughtful men in France remembered its dark side. They knew too well, from that ruinous experience, seventy years before... the difficulties and dangers of a currency not well based and controlled.

They had then learned how easy it is to issue it; how difficult it is to check its overissue; how seductively it leads to the absorption of the means of the workingmen and men of small fortunes; how heavily it falls on all those living on fixed incomes, salaries or wages; how securely it creates on the ruins of the prosperity of all men of meagre means a class of debauched speculators, the most injurious class that a nation can harbor,—more injurious, indeed, than professional criminals whom the law recognizes and can throttle; how it stimulates overproduction at first and leaves every industry flaccid afterward; how it breaks down thrift and develops political and social immorality.

All this France had been thoroughly taught by experience. Many then living had felt the result of such an experiment—the issues of paper money... and there were then sitting in the National Assembly of France many who owed the poverty of their families to those issues of paper. Hardly a man in the country who had not heard those who issued it cursed as the authors of the most frightful catastrophe France had then experienced...

...From the early reluctant and careful issues of paper we saw, as an immediate result, improvement and activity in business. Then arose the clamor for more paper money. At first, new issues were made with great difficulty; but, the dyke once broken, the current of irredeemable currency poured through; and, the breach thus enlarging, this currency was soon swollen beyond control. It was urged on by speculators for a rise in values; by demagogues who persuaded the mob that a nation, by its simple fiat, could stamp real value to any amount upon valueless objects. As a natural consequence a great debtor class grew rapidly, and this class gave its influence to depreciate more and more the currency in which its debts were to be paid.

The government now began, and continued by spasms to grind out still more paper; commerce was at first stimulated
by the difference in exchange; but this cause soon ceased to operate, and commerce, having been stimulated unhealthfully, wasted away. Manufactures at first received a great impulse; but, ere long, this overproduction and overstimulus proved as fatal to them as to commerce. From time to time there was a revival of hope caused by an apparent revival of business; but this revival of business was at last seen to be caused more and more by the desire of far-seeing and cunning men of affairs to exchange paper money for objects of permanent value.

As to the people at large, the classes living on fixed incomes and small salaries felt the pressure first, as soon as the purchasing power of their fixed incomes was reduced. Soon the great class living on wages felt it even more sadly. Prices of the necessities of life increased: merchants were obliged to increase them, not only to cover depreciation of their merchandise, but also to cover their risk of loss from fluctuation; and, while the prices of products thus rose, wages, which had at first gone up, under the general stimulus, lagged behind. Under the universal doubt and discouragement, commerce and manufactures were checked or destroyed. As a consequence the demand for labor wasdiminished; laboring men were thrown out of employment, and, under the operation of the simplest law of supply and demand, the price of labor—the daily wages of the laboring class—went down until, at a time when prices of food, clothing and various articles of consumption were enormous, wages were nearly as low as at the time preceding the first issue of irredeemable currency...

The mercantile classes at first thought themselves exempt from the general misfortune. They were delighted at the apparent advance in the value of the goods upon their shelves. But they soon found that, as they increased prices to cover the inflation of currency and the risk from fluctuation and uncertainty, purchases became less in amount and
payments less sure; a feeling of insecurity spread throughout the country; enterprise was deadened and stagnation
followed.

New issues of paper were then clamored for as more drams are demanded by a drunkard. New issues only increased the evil; capitalists were all the more reluctant to embark their money on such a sea of doubt. Workmen of all sorts were more and more thrown out of employment. Issue after issue of currency came; but no relief resulted save a momentary stimulus, which aggravated the disease.

The most ingenious evasions of natural laws in finance which the most subtle theorists could contrive were tried—all in vain; the most brilliant substitutes for those laws were tried; "self-regulating" schemes, "interconverting" schemes —all equally vain.* All thoughtful men had lost confidence. All men were waiting; stagnation became worse and worse... It ended in the complete financial, moral and political prostration of France—a prostration from which only a Napoleon could raise it.

...If we glance at the financial history of France during the Franco-Prussian War and the Communist struggle, in which a far more serious pressure was brought upon French finances than our own recent Civil War put upon American finance, and yet with no national stagnation or distress, but with a steady progress in prosperity, we shall see still more clearly the advantage of meeting a financial crisis in an honest and straightforward way, and by methods sanctioned by the world's most costly experience, rather than by yielding to dreamers, theorists, phrase-mongers, declaimers, schemers, speculators or to that sort of "Reform" which is "the last refuge of a scoundrel."

There is a lesson in all this which it behooves every thinking man to ponder.


Excerpted from "Fiat Money Inflation In France" [PDF], by Dr. Andrew Dickson White, first published in 1933.

Has the Inflation Genie Escaped? "Every nation is about nine meals away from a revolution"

Really good charts spotted at Market Daily Briefing that reflect the real costs of Ben Bernanke's magical printing press, which is spewing out dollars at an unprecedented clip.

Food is important, especially when you don't have it. The rule of 3s says "3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food" but another saying is, "every nation is about nine meals away from revolution."

It was posited here that the Arab Spring was due in no small part to high food prices for peoples whose food budgets started out at around 40%. For instance, the Egyptian government had a food price support in place, and when global prices rose, it became too expensive for them to run. Down went the Egyptian government, after being in power for 40 years. Check out the "Food" column in the table below and you'll have a sense.


The CPI that a population feels when prices move depends on where it spends. In the US, the food spend is 7% of our income. So if the food price index moves from 125 to 225 (an 80% move) as it did in 2006-2008, we would see a CPI impact of about 6%. For people whose food budgets account for 46% (such as the average Pakistani), they would see a CPI impact of 36%.

Since Barack Obama took office, the real price of food has increased about 40 percent.

Combined with Bernanke's ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate) policy -- which makes it extraordinarily difficult to generate income on savings accounts, CDs and money markets -- lower- and middle-class senior citizens are among the hardest hit by the irresponsible deficit spending instigated by Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

"No amount of propaganda can cover up the physical, economic, social, and psychological descent afflicting our world"

Jim Quinn, writing at The Burning Platform, has one hell of a wake-up call, the SparkNotes version of which follows:

... the dreadful results of retailers and restaurants even before the Obama tax increases confirms the country has been in recession since the second half of 2012. In 1979 the economy was still driven by domestic investment that accounted for 19% of GDP. Today, it wallows at all-time lows of 13%. In addition, our trade deficits, driven by debt fueled consumption, subtract 3.5% from GDP. These facts are reflected in the depressed outlook of small business owners who are the backbone of growth, hiring and entrepreneurship in this country. Small businesses of 500 employees or less employ half of all the private industry workers in the country and account for 65% of all new jobs created. There are approximately 27 million small businesses versus 18,000 large businesses. The chart below does not paint an improving picture. The small business optimism has dropped from an already low 92.8 in September 2012 to 90.8 in March 2013...


...On paper, my county appears to be thriving and healthy, with white collar professionals living an idyllic suburban existence. One small problem – the visual evidence as you travel along Welsh Road towards Montgomeryville or Germantown Pike towards Plymouth Meeting reveals a decaying infrastructure, dying retail meccas, and miles of empty office complexes.

I don’t think my general observations as I drive around Montgomery County are colored by any predisposition towards negativity. I see a gray winter like pallor has settled upon the land. I see termite pocked wooden fences with broken and missing slats. I see sagging porches. I see leaky roofs with missing tiles. I see vacant dilapidated hovels. I see mold tainted deteriorating siding on occupied houses. I see weed infested overgrown yards. I see collapsing barns and crumbling farm silos. I see houses and office buildings that haven’t been painted in 20 years. I see clock towers in strip malls with the wrong time. I see shuttered gas stations. I see retail stores with lights out in their signs. I see trees which fell during Hurricane Sandy five months ago still sitting in yards untouched. I see potholes not being filled. I see disintegrating highway overpasses and bridges. I constantly see emergency repairs on burst water mains. I see malfunctioning stoplights. I see fading traffic signage. I see regional malls with rust stained walls beneath their massive unlit Macys, JC Penney and Sears logos. I see hundreds of Space Available, For Lease, For Rent, Vacancy, For Sale and Store Closing signs dotting the suburban landscape. These sights are in a relatively affluent suburban county. When I reach West Philly, it looks more like Dresden in 1945...


...There are 1,300 regional malls in this country, with most anchored by a JC Penney, Sears, Barnes & Noble, or Best Buy. The combination of declining real household income, aging population, lackluster employment growth, rising energy, food and healthcare costs, mounting tax burdens, and escalating on-line purchasing will result in the creation of 200 or more ghost malls over the next five years. The closure of thousands of big box stores is baked in the cake. The American people have run out of money. They have no equity left in their houses to tap. The average worker has only $25,000 of retirement savings and they are taking loans against it to make the mortgage payment and put food on the table. They can’t afford to perform normal maintenance on their property and are one emergency away from bankruptcy. In a true cycle of doom, most of the jobs “created” since 2009 are low skill retail jobs with little or no benefits. As storefronts go dark and more “Available” signs are erected in front of these weed infested eyesores, more Americans will lose their jobs and be unable to do their 71% part in our economic Ponzi scheme...


...The reason office buildings across the land sit vacant, with mold and mildew silently working its magic behind the walls and under the carpets, is because small businesses are closing up shop and only a crazy person would attempt to start a new business in this warped economic environment of debt dependent diminishing returns...

The 27 million small businesses in the country are fighting a losing battle against overbearing government regulations, increasingly heavy tax burdens, operating cost inflation, Obamacare mandates, a low skill poorly educated workforce, and customers with diminishing resources and declining disposable income...

...Small business owners are not optimistic about the future because they don’t have a sugar daddy like Bernanke to provide them with free money and a promise to bail them out if their high risk investments go bad. With small businesses accounting for 65% of all new hiring in this country and looming healthcare taxes, mandates, regulations and penalties approaching like a freight train, there is absolutely zero probability that office buildings will be filling up with new employees in the next few years. With hundreds of billions in commercial real estate loans coming due over the next three years, over 60% of the loans in the office and retail category, vacancy rates at record levels, and property values still 30% to 40% below the original loan values, a rendezvous with reality awaits. How long can bankers pretend to be paid on loans by developers who pretend they are collecting rent from non-existent tenants who are selling goods to non-existent customers? The implosion in the commercial real estate market will also blow a gaping hole in the Federal Reserve balance sheet, which is leveraged 55 to 1...


...The mainstream media pawns, posing as journalists, have not only gotten the facts wrong regarding the current situation, but their myopia extends into the near future. The perpetual optimists that always see a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow are either willfully ignorant or a product of our government run public education system and can’t perform basic mathematical computations. As pointed out previously, consumer spending drives 71% of our economy. As would be expected, the highest level of annual spending occurs between the ages of 35 to 54 years old when people are in their peak earnings years. Young people are already burdened with $1 trillion of government peddled student loan debt and are defaulting at a 20% rate because there are no decent jobs available. Millions of Boomers are saddled with underwater mortgages, prodigious levels of credit card and auto loan debt, with retirement savings of $25,000 or less. Anyone expecting the young or old to ramp up spending over the next decade must be a CNBC pundit, University of Phoenix MBA graduate or Ivy League trained economist...


...There will be 10,000 Boomers per day turning 65 years old for the next 18 years. Consumers in the 65-74 age segment spend 28% less on average than during their peak years. It is estimated that between 2010 and 2020 there will be approximately 14.5 million more consumers aged 65 or older. The number of Americans in their peak spending years will crash over the next decade. This surely bodes well for our suburban sprawl, mall based, cheap energy dependent, debt fueled society. Do you think this will lead to a revival in retail and office commercial real estate?

As they say on the respectable blogs, read the whole thing.

Stratfor warns: "Any solution [to the European financial crisis] will involve the loss of depositors' money"

By George Friedman, Founder and Chairman, Stratfor Research

The European economic crisis has taken different forms in different places, and Cyprus is the latest country to face the prospect of financial ruin. Overextended banks in Cyprus are teetering on the brink of failure for issuing loans they cannot repay, which has prompted the tiny Mediterranean country, a member of the European Union, to turn to Brussels for help. Late Sunday, the European Union and Cypriot president announced new terms for a bailout that would provide the infusion of cash necessary to prevent bankruptcies in Cyprus' banking sector and, more important, prevent a banking panic from spreading to the rest of Europe.

What makes this crisis different from the previous bailouts for Greece, Ireland or elsewhere are the conditions Brussels has attached for its assistance. Due to circumstances unique to Cyprus, namely the questionable origin of a large chunk of the deposits in its now-stricken banking sector and that sector's small size relative to the overall European economy, the European Union, led by Germany, has taken a harder line with the country. Cyprus has few sources of capital besides its capacity as a banking shelter, so Brussels required that the country raise part of the necessary funds from its own banking sector -- possibly by seizing money from certain bank deposits and putting it toward the bailout fund. The proposal has not yet been approved, but if enacted it would undermine a formerly sacred principle of banking in most industrial nations -- the security of deposits -- setting a new and possibly destabilizing precedent in Europe.

Cyprus' Dilemma

For years before the crisis, Cyprus promoted itself as an offshore financial center by creating a tax structure and banking rules that made depositing money in the country attractive to foreigners. As a result, Cyprus' financial sector grew to dwarf the rest of the Cypriot economy, accounting for about eight times the country's annual gross domestic product and employing a substantial portion of the nation's work force. A side effect of this strategy, however, was that if the financial sector experienced problems, the rest of the domestic economy would not be big enough to stabilize the banks without outside help.

Europe's economic crisis spawned precisely those sorts of problems for the Cypriot banking sector. This was not just a concern for Cyprus, though. Even though Cyprus' banking sector is tiny relative to the rest of Europe's, one Cypriot bank defaulting on what it owed other banks could put the whole European banking system in question, and the last thing the European Union needs now is a crisis of confidence in its banks.

The Cypriots were facing chaos if their banks failed because the insurance system was insufficient to cover the claims of depositors. For its part, the European Union could not risk the financial contagion. But Brussels could not simply bail out the entire banking system, both because of the precedent it would set and because the political support for a total bailout wasn't there. This was particularly the case for Germany, which would carry much of the financial burden and is preparing for elections in September 2013 before an electorate that is increasingly hostile to bailouts.

Even though the German public may oppose the bailouts, it benefits immensely from what those bailouts preserve. As I have pointed out many times, Germany is heavily dependent on exports and the European Union is critical to those exports as a free trade zone. Although Germany also imports a great deal from the rest of the bloc, a break in the free trade zone would be catastrophic for the German economy. If all imports were cut along with exports, Germany would still be devastated because what it produces and exports and what it imports are very different things. Germany could not absorb all its production and would experience massive unemployment.

Currently, Germany's unemployment rate is below 6 percent while Spain's is above 25 percent. An exploding financial crisis would cut into consumption, which would particularly hurt an export-dependent country like Germany. Berlin's posture through much of the European economic crisis has been to pretend it is about to stop providing assistance to other countries, but the fact is that doing so would inflict pain on Germany, too. Germany will make its threats and its voters will be upset, but in the end, the country would not be enjoying high employment if the crisis got out of hand. So the German game is to constantly threaten to let someone sink, while in the end doing whatever has to be done.

Cyprus was a place where Germany could show its willingness to get tough but didn't carry any of the risks that would arise in pushing a country such as Spain too hard, for example. Cyprus' economy was small enough and its problems unique enough that the rest of Europe could dismiss any measures taken against the country as a one-off. Here was a case where the German position appears enormously more powerful than usual. And in isolation, this is true -- if we ignore the question of what conclusion the rest of Europe, and the world, draws from the treatment of Cyprus.

A Firmer Line

Under German guidance, the European Union made an extraordinary demand on the Cypriots. It demanded that a tax be placed on deposits in the country's two largest banks. The tax would be about 10 percent and would, under the initial terms, be applied to all accounts, regardless of their size. This was an unprecedented solution. Since the global financial crisis of the 1920s, all advanced industrial countries -- and many others -- had been operating on a fundamental principle that deposits in banks were utterly secure. They were not regarded as bonds paying certain interest, whose value would disappear if the bank failed. Deposits were regarded as riskless placements of money, with the risk covered by deposit insurance for smaller deposits, but in practical terms, guaranteed by the national wealth.

This guarantee meant that individual savings would be safe and that working capital parked by corporations in a bank was safe as well. The alternative was not only uncertainty, but also people hoarding cash and preventing it from entering the financial system. It was necessary to have a secure place to put money so that it was available for lending. The runs on banks in the 1920s and 1930s drove home the need for total security for deposits.

Brussels demanded that the bailout for Cypriot banks be partly paid for by depositors in those banks. That demand essentially violated the social contract on the sanctity of bank deposits and did so in a country that was a member of the European Union -- one of the world's major economic blocs. Proponents of the measure pointed out that many of the depositors were not Cypriot nationals but rather foreigners, many of whom were Russian. Moreover, it was suggested that the only reason for a Russian to be putting money in a Cypriot bank was to get it out of Russia, and the only motive for that had to be nefarious. It followed that the confiscation was not targeted against ordinary people but against shady Russians.

There is no question that there are shady Russians putting money into Cyprus. But ordinary Cypriots had their money in the same banks and so did many Cypriot and foreign companies, including European companies, who were doing business in Cyprus and need money for payroll and so on. The proposal might look like an attempt to seize Russian money, but it would pinch the bank accounts of all Cypriots as well as a sizable amount of legitimate Russian money. Confiscating 10 percent of all deposits could devastate individuals and the overall economy and likely would prompt companies operating in Cyprus to move their cash elsewhere. The measure would have been devastating and the Cypriot parliament rejected it.

Another deal, the one currently up for approval, tried to mitigate the problem but still broke the social contract. Accounts smaller than 100,000 euros (about $128,000) would not be touched. However, accounts larger than 100,000 euros would be taxed at an uncertain rate, currently estimated at 20 percent, while bondholders would lose up to 40 percent. These numbers will likely shift again, but assuming they are close to the final figures, depositors putting money into banks beyond this amount are at risk depending on the financial condition of the bank.

The impact on Cyprus is more than Russian mafia money being taxed. All corporations doing business in Cyprus could have 20 percent of their operating cash seized. Regardless of precisely how the Cypriot banking system is restructured, the fact is that the European Union demanded that Cyprus seize portions of bank accounts from large depositors. From a business' perspective, 100,000 euros is not all that much when you are running a supermarket or a car dealership or a construction company, but this arbitrary level could easily be raised in the future and the mere existence of the measure will make attracting investment more difficult.

A New Precedent

The more significant development was the fact that the European Union has now made it official policy, under certain circumstances, to encourage member states to seize depositors' assets to pay for the stabilization of financial institutions. To put it simply, if you are a business, the safety of your money in a bank depends on the bank's financial condition and the political considerations of the European Union. What had been a haven -- no risk and minimal returns -- now has minimal returns and unknown risks. Brussels' emphasis that this was mostly Russian money is not assuring, either. More than just Russian money stands to be taken for the bailout fund if the new policy is approved. Moreover, the point of the global banking system is that money is safe wherever it is deposited. Europe has other money centers, like Luxembourg, where the financial system outstrips gross domestic product. There are no problems there right now, but as we have learned, the European Union is an uncertain place. If Russian deposits can be seized in Nicosia, why not American deposits in Luxembourg?

This was why it was so important to emphasize the potentially criminal nature of the Russian deposits and to downplay the effect on ordinary law-abiding Cypriots. Brussels has worked very hard to make the Cyprus case seem unique and non-replicable: Cyprus is small and its banking system attracted criminals, so the principle that deposits in banks are secure doesn't necessarily apply there. Another way to look at it is that an EU member, like some other members of the bloc, could not guarantee the solvency of its banks so Brussels forced the country to seize deposits in order to receive help stabilizing the system. Viewed that way, the European Union has established a new option for itself in dealing with depositors in troubled banks, and that principle now applies to all of Europe, particularly to those countries with financial institutions potentially facing similar problems.

The question, of course, is whether foreign depositors in European banks will accept that Cyprus was one of a kind. If they decide that it isn't obvious, then foreign corporations -- and even European corporations -- could start pulling at least part of their cash out of European banks and putting it elsewhere. They can minimize the amount of cash on hand in Europe by shifting to non-European banks and transferring as needed. Those withdrawals, if they occur, could create a massive liquidity crisis in Europe. At the very least, every reasonable CFO will now assume that the risk in Europe has risen and that an eye needs to be kept on the financial health of institutions where they have deposits. In Europe, depositing money in a bank is no longer a no-brainer.

Now we must ask ourselves why the Germans would have created this risk. One answer is that they were confident they could convince depositors that Cyprus was one of a kind and not to be repeated. The other answer was that they had no choice. The first explanation was undermined March 25, when Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem said that the model used in Cyprus could be used in future bank bailouts. Locked in by an electorate that does not fully understand Germany's vulnerability, the German government decided it had to take a hard line on Cyprus regardless of risk. Or Germany may be preparing a new strategy for the management of the European financial crisis. The banking system in Europe is too big to salvage if it comes to a serious crisis. Any solution will involve the loss of depositors' money. Contemplating that concept could lead to a run on banks that would trigger the crisis Europe fears. Solving a crisis and guaranteeing depositors may be seen as having impossible consequences. Setting the precedent in Cyprus has the advantage of not appearing to be a precedent.

It's not clear what the Germans or the EU negotiators are thinking, and all these theories are speculative. What is certain is that an EU country, facing a crisis in its financial system, is now weighing whether to pay for that crisis by seizing depositors' money. And with that, the Europeans have broken a barrier that has been in place since the 1930s. They didn't do that casually and they didn't do that because they wanted to. But they did it.

"Europe's Disturbing Precedent in the Cyprus Bailout" is republished with permission of Stratfor.

"Willful Ignorance Is Not an Excuse"

Bloomberg -- the news service, not the idiot mayor -- reports that:

...politicians such as President Barack Obama to House Speaker John Boehner say the U.S. doesn’t face an immediate debt crisis.

Refuting this madness is Karl Denninger, who likens America to a typical, middle-class household.

Let's assume that a few years ago you had $51,000 in annual income, about average.

You also, however, had $180,000 in debt, and most of your debt is in a balloon note mortgage that has to be rolled over every three years. That is, every three years you must find someone who will write you a new mortgage, or you're out of your house...

Now let's step forward a few years to today.

Your income has dropped somewhat to $48,980, which is a bit below average, but not by too much. That's a 4% reduction, incidentally.

But your debt is now $328,660, or very close to double what it was five years ago. The reason your debt has increased is that you spent $70,760 last year, and in fact have been doing this for the last five years -- spending dramatically more than you took in. You had a couple of very bad years for income, but never cut back on your spending -- and in fact you still aren't back to where you were on income five years previous.

You believe there is no "debt crisis" because the cost of borrowing all that money has gone down in interest rate terms. But this is a chimera, because you didn't borrow all the money for 30 years, locking in your cost -- instead, in order to make your spending better than it would otherwise be, you have borrowed a huge percentage of this money on a short-term basis which still must be rolled over every couple of years!

Your debt:income ratio has deteriorated by about a factor of two in the last five years.

"No immediate crisis"? Says who? That's not under your control because you neither control your income nor can you compel anyone to roll that debt over at a favorable cost.

You are currently enjoying this cheap lending because people are scared, in fact, that all of their other options for the use of their capital will result in huge losses, while they believe you are "safer" in this regard.

This is not good, it's bad.

The numbers used above are, in fact, the federal budget and debt figures with some zeroes and such lopped off.

Denninger outlines the results of two scenarios:

a) Status quo - the economy doesn't improve, but people continue to lend you money at low rates primarily due to fear. Eventually confidence is lost in your ability to repay and, one day, the debt can't be rolled over. That is when bankruptcy occurs, suddenly and with absolute certainty.

b) Improvement - the economy improves to the point where interest rates rise; your ability to make payments becomes harder and harder, which causes interest rate demands to increase, and so on. A crisis ensues.


The most basic financial advice ever uttered is TANSTAAFL - "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."

Yet there are those who claim that the Fed's endless money-printing is somehow different. Here's a preview of coming attractions for you drones, media clowns and related Obama sycophants: it ain't different this time.

RED ALERT: Harry Reid's Gun Ban Bill to Include Universal Registration and Prohibit Veterans From Owning Firearms

Any day now, Senate Majority Leader Harry "Land Deal" Reid will introduce a bill that erases the Second Amendment from your Bill of Rights.

...the number of the bill we are fighting is S. 649. Harry Reid introduced it on Thursday and brought it directly onto the Senate calendar. This means the bill can now come up at any time — probably soon after the Easter recess is over.

Second, the bill is a lot worse than even we anticipated.

We expected it to contain the Veterans Gun Ban, which would mean that you would sell, gift, or raffle a gun in America at the risk of a 15-year prison sentence because of something you didn't know about the veteran/buyer.


But, surprisingly to us, the Far Left has convinced Reid to include the original Schumer version of the Universal Registry Bill. This would ban private sales of firearms, unless purchasers first get the permission from the government. If Senators can pass this de facto registration bill, they will be well on the way to confiscation (see, for example, Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York, who has a gun owner registry and has called for gun confiscation)... If this bill is passed, Senators will claim that they “broke the back” of gun owners in America.

....as we predicted, anti-gun zealots have begun to use the "ObamaCare Paradigm" to threaten, bribe, and coerce senators into submission on the most far-reaching aspects of gun control, including Feinstein's proposal to ban shotguns, rifles and handguns that millions of Americans legally own. So if the "motion to proceed" to S. 649 is adopted with 60 votes, then Feinstein's ban could be passed in the Senate with only 50 votes (plus Biden).

Already, articles are being published to intimidate any Democratic Senator who votes against any gun control and threatening them with the prospect of facing an anti-gun primary challenger — just like we saw on ObamaCare.

ACTION: The strategy remains: We need to defeat this bill by filibustering and voting down the “motion to proceed” to S. 649. Please contact your senators and distribute this alert far and wide.

Click here to send your Senators a prewritten email message.
Show up at their offices with a delegation during the congressional recess. Rally and conduct demonstrations and call-a-thons and writing campaigns. Know that the anti-gun Left will be doing the same.

As an aside, I wonder whether anyone in the media has the slightest interest in finding out how Harry Reid -- a lifelong "public servant" -- has amassed such a huge fortune, which is likely in excess of $10 million.

eHealth Survey: Average Monthly Obamacare Premiums for a Family Will Jump from $400 to... $600 a month

Like a kidney-stone, we had to pass the bill to find out what was in it.

Individual and family insurance plans with comprehensive benefits could see major price spikes in the coming months as more measures of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act come into place.


A new report found plan premiums that cover benefits like prescription drugs and maternity care, among others, will increase by nearly half this year. The “Cost of Comprehensive Health Benefits” report from eHealth, Inc. found the average monthly premiums for individual and family health insurance plans are 47% higher than average when they cover a comprehensive list of eight health benefits compared to2012. Deductibles are on average for plans that cover these benefits are 27% lower than the average for all plans.

The report compared 30,000 individual plans purchased across 32 states on eHealthInsurance.com. eHealth has released this report since 2005...

Just for grins, let's recall how the President "sold" Obamacare to a reluctant American public (before the Democrats rammed it down our throats without a single representative bothering to read the bill before voting on it).

• Obamacare will "cut the cost of a typical family's premium by up to $2,500 a year." - Lie.

• "If you like your healthcare plan, you'll be able to keep your healthcare plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what." - Lie.

• "Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase." - Lie.

• "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits - either now or in the future." - Lie.

• It's not a government takeover: "I don't believe that government can or should run healthcare." - Lie.

• The new healthcare law will improve, not hurt, the quality of American healthcare. - Lie.

Those are just off the top of my head. There are probably more. My prediction: 2014 will be a banner year for the Republican Party, in spite of the idiocy of John Boehner and Karl Rove. Because our very survival will be at stake with the madness that is this stuttering clusterf*** of a miserable failure of a bill.


Hat tip: BadBlue Financial News.

The Declaration of Dependence

IN WASHINGTON DC, MARCH 17, 2013
The unanimous Declaration of the President of the United States
hen in the course of political expediency it becomes necessary for one political party to ignore its country's Constitution and the legal system which hath guided it for 236 years, Gaia and MF Global require that it declare the causes which impel them to sedition.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all workers can be divided into races, income levels, religions, genders, and other artificial partitions, so as to advance Statism; that they possess certain unalienable rights, that among these are health care, food stamps, phones, cable television, and a condo within walking distance of a Starbucks --

That to redistribute these rights, Governments are usurped by politicians, deriving their powers by the theft of private property and the restriction of liberty --

That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of centralized, authoritarian Government, it is the Right of the Democrats to ignore the Constitution or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on the teachings of Marx, of Engels, of Alinsky, of Cloward and of Piven.

Prudence, indeed, would reject our claim to change government for light and transient causes, seeing as how we must reject facts, logic, history and reason to advance our tyrannical measures. Indeed, we rely upon our experience that hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer so long as government cheese and Jersey Shore are freely available to anyone who asks, whether citizen or not.

And when some object, after a long train of abuses and usurpations by we, the Democrat leadership, it is our right, and it is our duty, to play the race card, to tar them as 'extremists' and 'crackpots', to use the media to ridicule them, and to create a "Civilian National Security Force" to ensure their ultimate destruction.

Such has been our suffering abuse of these Tea Parties; and such is now the necessity which commands us to eradicate their former System of Government. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a receptive media.

- He has refused to allow us to ignore the Constitution, which is no more useful to us than a scrap of toilet paper, which is, as Ezra Klein says, more than 100 years old, and which, may in fact, be emblematic of witchcraft.

- He has expressed feigned outrage over so-called 'lawlessness' by our Department of Justice, which has offered reparations to the New Black Panthers, illegal immigrants, and other workers deserving special treatment.

- He has attempted to roll back progress related to socialized medicine, death panels and the eradication of religious liberty, despite our agitprop designed to fool the general public.

- He has harangued our Senators and Representatives, causing them to skip town hall meetings because of their loaded questions.

- He has endeavoured to prevent our depopulation of these States; whether through abortion or in pursuit of our green agenda; both of which command us to reduce the numbers of the human virus.

- He has resisted our dictates to nationalize more than the one-third of United States land that we already have federalized.

- He has complained endlessly about our refusal to secure the borders, which can only strengthen our numbers in subsequent elections with cadres of dependent migrants.

- He has resisted our assignation of Wise Latina Marxists and other Socialists to the Highest Court.

- He has rejected our multitude of New Offices, Agencies and Bureaucracies, and all of our swarms of Officers that must harass them to ensure we confiscate as much of their private property as is our just due.

- He has fought our imposition of new Taxes, which must be installed to combat carbon dioxide pollution, light pollution, non-conforming toilet tanks, illegal shower-heads, and sound pollution.

We, therefore, the Democrats of the united States of america, in General Congress and in the Executive, Assembled, appealing to Mighty Gozar the Traveler; We ask that he will come in one of the pre-chosen forms--During the rectification of the Pelosi transjunction, the traveler came as a large and enchanted Mikulski! Then, during the third resolution of the Reid supplicants, they chose a new form for him: that of a giant Barney! Many Tea Partiers and Constitutional Conservatives knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of Hillary that day, I can tell you!

And for the support of this Destruction, with a firm reliance on our Utopian dreams, we mutually pledge to Gaia our support, unless it interferes with our pursuit of personal wealth, aggregation of power or the acquisition of our third home -- this one in the Hamptons.

MARK LEVIN TRANSCIPT: What happens when the system collapses?

A caller to Thursday's Mark Levin Show [MP3] had an interesting question regarding the inevitable result of Barack Obama's record-setting deficits.

Curtis: We talk about all of this out-of-control spending, we have the CBO reports, the GAO, the Medicare Trustees, I mean how much time do we really have before...

Levin: Well, the Social Security Trustees report that we have only 11 years, that's all.

Curtis: But the government... the government bubble... the government collapse?

Levin: It's hard to know. Hard to know, but at some point... you can see, Curtis, how they're struggling now. They're having to do these little Continuing Resolutions, they have to lie about how much we're in debt and the yearly deficit.

You can see that they're in full cover-up mode like Ponzi or Madoff. But it's hard to know exactly when [it all comes crumbling down]...

Curtis: What will this collapse look like [when it occurs]? What will we experience?

Levin: I can give some indicators. I don't know exactly what it will look llike. But some indicators will be:

- the seizing of assets... oh, they'll say it's done legally, to get "the rich", to close some "unfair loophole". Including, I believe, and I've talked about this extensively, 401(k) plans and private pensions. There's trillions of dollars sitting there and, in the view of the government, you have that money sitting there because they gave you certain tax advantages that they choose to take away.

- also in terms of programs the government offers, those programs will dry up. You'll start to see that.

- you'll start to see hyper-inflation, where the Fed -- through monetary policy -- will try to keep apace with [Obama's] disastrous fiscal policies.

- you'll see promises that the government made, such as Social Security and Medicare, start to disappear.

What you'll see in a more theoretical sense is a breakdown in the social contract. You'll see that all of these welfare programs were not social service and insurance programs, those were just facades. So all of the false premises and pretexts that were used to develop these massive entitlements, all of the borrowing and printing, will have an enormously devastating effect on our financial system.

And what is our financial system? What is the currency? The currency is not just a means of exchange. It represents the fruits of your labor. It's your paycheck. It's your savings. It's your pension. It's your investment. It's what you use to purchase food and clothing and the basics, energy. The government's in charge of the currency. The government's in charge of valuing it devaluing it.

And so my point is, you will see signs... of more and more aggressive central government... this is one of the reasons you hear me, on and on and on, attack class warfare. Because it's not about class warfare. If they can break down the most successful and productive elements of our society, they're going to break you down.

And when they break you down, you're going to ask for help. From whom? The government. Not all of you, but you get the point. When the thing begins to unravel, it collapses.

I'm not Nostradamus here, but the Constitution was set up the way it was set up to prevent this sort of thing. The people in public office today, the president, almost all of the members of his party in DC, reject limited constitutional government.

The lessons of Argentina are especially relevant.


Thanks to Biff Spackle for the transcript.

What the Democrat Party Told Me

They told me that allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons would turn our streets into rivers of blood.

They told me that taking trillions of dollars from the successful and giving it to those "who truly needed it" would cure poverty.

They told me that giving home loans to those who couldn't afford them would make the American dream achievable for all.

They told me that paying into the Social Security "Trust Fund" would guarantee a comfortable retirement for everyone.

They told me that allowing teachers to unionize in public schools would help inner city students reach for the stars.

They told me that the federal government could run a guaranteed, affordable health care program for seniors forever.

They told me that the new employment paradigm consisted of millions of "green jobs".

They told me that their support for immoral and criminal behavior wouldn't result in the breakdown of the two-parent family.

They told me that spending trillions on Stimulus programs would heal a damaged economy.

They told me that raising taxes on corporations and "the rich" would create more jobs.

They told me that our borders were "as secure as they've ever been".

They told me that intentionally restricting access to our own sources of energy would reduce dependence on foreign oil.

They told me that recklessly spreading unemployment benefits and food stamps would jump-start the economy.

They told me that, in spite of the VA and the Indian Health Service, they could successfully run the entire American health care system.

They told me that their record-breaking borrowing could never result in a downgrade of the United States' AAA credit rating.

They told me that "the Constitution doesn't matter".

They told me that the Constitution has to change with the times.

They told me that I exist to serve the government and not the other way around.

They told me that anyone who opposes their unconstitutional, reckless and failed policies are racists.

Well, I'm here to tell you:

Everything they told me was a lie.

Everything they told me was wrong.

Intentionally, diabolically, criminally wrong.

And if we don't begin to turn back the tide of centralized government, if we don't politically obliterate the Democrat Party, this beautiful Republic, this magnificent country, this bastion of free enterprise and private property rights, this shining city on a hill... well, it will be finished.


Related: Don't cry for me, America.